The Confession by Charles Todd

Three men are fishing the marshes of Essex (outside of London) in 1915 when they come across a floating body. They determine that the man is indeed dead from the bullet wound in the back of his head. They also discover that he has a fair amount of cash on his person. Deciding that he will have no use for the money, they divide the amount in three and swear to keep their discovery a secret. And so starts Charles Todd’s latest Ian Rutledge mystery.

It is now 1920, the Great War has ended, and Sergeant Hampton brings a man into Inspector Rutledge’s office. The man, Wyatt Russell, is apparently dying of cancer and he is there to confess to the murder of his cousin, Justin Fowler. Rutledge can’t get many details from Russell but his interest is piqued by the confession. Although this isn’t an official investigation yet, Rutledge decides that he has to find out more details. Following the slimmest of leads, he travels to the edges if Essex and the abandoned estate, Rivers Edge, where the Russell family lived. Finding no one there, and proceeds into the nearby town of Furnham where he discovers that all the citizens seem to resent visitors. He realizes it will be difficult to learn anything about the Russell family who owned Rivers Edge.

Little by little he starts to accumulate information on the Russells. It seems that Justin Fowler and Cynthia Farraday were taken in and raised by the Russell family when both had lost all of their parents. But now the mystery only deepens as a new body turns up and Rutledge identifies the body as the man who presented himself as Wyatt Russell … but it is not Russell! The corpse is identified as Ben Willet and where does he figure in all of this? Now the case has become official and it is up to Rutledge to put the pieces of the mystery in some sort of context. Obviously a murderer or murderers are still loose in this isolated part of Essex, and some of the answers may be found in the war records of the all the men involved in the case.

The mother and son writing team known as Charles Todd has produced another fascinating mystery, especially for the lovers of nuanced English mysteries.

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A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd

It’s around Christmas time in 1917, the tide of World War I is about to shift as England gains a new combatant fighting on their side … the United States is about to join the fray. Bess Crawford, an English nurse is back in London, on leave from the front. As she takes the bus home to her apartment, the bus stops and the passengers watch as the police search the area near where the bus has stopped. Bess suspects that they are looking for a deserter but soon the bus resumes it’s passage to Bess’ stop.

As Bess approaches her flat she notices a figure huddled in her doorway. At first she’s not sure if it a man or a woman, but as she draws closer she realizes it is a woman, who is obviously cold and shivering. Bess gets the woman to come into her apartment and offers her some tea and a chance to warm up. It takes a while but the woman eventually tells Bess that her name is Lydia. Lydia is very subdued and then Bess notices some severe bruises on her face and head.

It takes some time before Lydia will admit that the bruises were the result of her husband, Roger hitting her. Bess is naturally quite upset about the circumstances and is not sure she wants Lydia to return home by herself. Bess insists on accompanying home to Vixen Hill. There Bess gets to meet the Ellis clan, rich and not very forgiving of the lower classes. Roger won’t admit to hitting Lydia but his mother suspects it’s the truth. Lydia is about to get tied up in the affairs of the Ellis’, especially when a cousin, George Hughes turns up murdered. Now all the people present when the body is discovered must stay in place as the police try to sort it all out.

Charles Todd is an interesting author because the name covers the dual writing team of mother and son. They live in Delaware and North Carolina but write with the nuanced style of English mystery writers. Besides the Bess Crawford series, they are also well known for the Inspector Rutledge series.

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Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

When this book opens, Maisie Dobbs is setting up her own agency with a sign on the door that says “Psychologist and Investigator”. She is hoping to carry on the work of her former mentor, a man who coached her through her education and trained her in his own detective agency. Maisie is the daughter of a former vegetable vendor who went into service at the age of 14. When the Lady of the house caught her reading in the library on her off hours, she offered to sponsor the young girl’s education. That was 15 years before. Since then, Maisie has served in WWI and graduated from Cambridge University.

Winspear has broken the book into three parts. The first introduces Maisie as an investigator and shows how she solves her first crime. The second part tells the story of Maisie’s youth and how she came to be in service, and of her time as a nurse in WWI. The third section tells about the mystery she stumble across while investigating her first case. It seems initially to be a routine case of possible infidelity, but Maisie quickly discovers that the wife is not seeing another man. In discovering the wife’s secret, she also finds that unknown numbers of veterans are disappearing into a care center and never being seen again. Is this a legitimate therapy center, or is someone taking advantage of men who served their country and came back damaged?

Overall, the book is as much about the impact of WWI the soldiers and civilians of England as it is detective story. The details and descriptions of life in the 1920’s are fascinating. I find it difficult to imagine the amount of losses Great Britain suffered in the war, and how long these effects lingered. I am looking forward to reading the rest of this series (there are nine in the series now).

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The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

Many of you know of Janet L.’s persuasive powers when it comes to recommending a book.  Well she worked her magic on me with The House at Riverton and I never regretted it.

While I’ve not enjoyed Kate Morton’s sophomore and junior efforts as much, her debut novel struck a chord with me and generated the same feelings I had when watching (not reading) Remains of the Day and Gosford Park — that behind-the-scenes look into the country homes of early 19th century England, that angle you can only get from the staff’s point of view.  For me, the appeal of books set from this perspective is that, even in a novel, you get the unvarnished truth of the story, not the façade that the people who live in these grand homes present to the world.  In The House at Riverton, the story begins in the present, with the now 98-year-old Grace being asked by a film director to recall her experiences working as a maid in the 1920s, specifically about the suicide of a young poet that occurred in the very house that Grace worked in from the age of 14.

Grace decides this is her opportunity to tell the truth about that suicide and the fallout it created in the aristocratic family she worked for, for so many years.  Told in a series of flashbacks, this book will keep you turning the pages as the secrets are revealed against a beautifully descriptive backdrop that stretches from the Edwardian period to post-World War I England.

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Also see: our previous blog posts about Kate Morton’s books.

The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld

It’s New York City, the year is 1920. The Great War is over and people are trying to get their lives back to normal. The economy is extremely  weak, when two old friends meet. They are Dr.  Strathan Younger and Captain James Littlemore. Dr.  Younger has just returned from the war and has brought with him a French refugee by the name of Colette Rousseau and her young brother, Luc.  Littlemore  is a Captain in the NYPD.

But all their lives are about to drastically change in a matter of  moments , when a tremendous bomb goes off in Wall Street. The damage is terrific, many lives are lost as Strathan attempts to treat the injured and Littlemore tries to get the police to regain control of the situation. In the  middle  of the chaos, Colette goes off for more supplies for the wounded but doesn’t return. By the time some order is restored , Littlemore and Younger go to find Colette but she has vanished…..and so has Luc. A clue to the disappearance may lie in the explanation that Younger gives to Littlemore.

Younger and Rousseau’s history starts back in Europe during the war.  Younger is treating the wounded when he meets Colette who is traveling to the front with one of Madame Curie’s latest inventions…..the X-ray machine. Working together, they are  more  quickly able to diagnose injuries and therefore improve the survival rate of the wounded soldiers. Colette has been studying with Madame Curie at the Sorbonne in Paris. Colette lost both her parents in the war and the only other family  survivor is her 10 year old brother, Luc.

It is this developing friendship that brought Colette, Luc and Strathan to New York, but there is one more factor that may be at play in her disappearance. Rousseau brought to New York a small amount of radium that she obtained before leaving Europe…….and this may be the key factor in her disappearance!! Someone is after the radium, plus two strange  red-headed women are also pursuing Colette. Come along  for  an exciting trip of historical fiction in  Jed Rubenfeld’s  latest thriller.

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A Lonely Death by Charles Todd

It is post-WWI in England and Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard is about to be assigned to a case that may involve a serial killer. He is being sent to the town of Eastfield in Northern England. Three local men have been murdered exactly 3 days apart and by the same method — a garrote. And all three, Jeffers, Roper and Pierce, served in the British Army during the First World War and all were wounded but survived. They knew each other but were not close friends and yet their link to the War must serve Rutledge as the starting point to solve the murders.

Prior to heading north to Eastfield, Rutledge first attends the funeral of a good friend and comrade from the War, Maxwell Hume. Hume, haunted by war visions, has taken his own life. Rutledge, too, has his own demon from the War, Hamish MacLeod. Hamish was court-marshaled and executed for not following a direct order, an order he knew would result in horrible causalities to the troops under his command. Hamish was the one person that Rutledge was closest to during his term of service and now whatever he does and wherever he goes, Rutledge hears Hamish’s voice and guidance.

Eastfield is a small and peaceful English town and the three murders have put the townspeople on edge. Rudledge and the town’s Constable Walker must gather as much evidence as they can as quickly as they can, for they are approaching the third day since the last killing. What is the link among the three victims? Why now?  Who else may play a part in this sequence of events? Rutledge knows he can’t waste any time, even if it means stepping on people’s toes and feelings.

The English mystery is almost always more nuanced than the American mystery and it has many fans.  Charles Todd is a mother and son writing team, with the mother living in Delaware and the son in North Carolina.  The duo writes in a similar style to American mystery author Elizabeth George. Charles Todd has written twelve Ian Rutledge novels and this may qualify as his best.

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Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour by Joseph Persico

Picture yourself as a soldier in the trenches of World War I.  It’s the morning of November 11th, 1918.  Word circulates through your unit that the Armistice ending the war will take effect at 11:00am.  You glance at your watch and see that the time is 10:55am.  What would you do?  If you answered “celebrate and breathe a sigh of relief that I’m going to survive”, you might very well be wrong.  Instead your unit commander orders you and the rest of the men to go over the top and charge the enemy…

In the last moments of the war, Allied troops took over 11,000 casualties.  Why would any sane officer order troops into harm’s way when peace is assured?  Was it to punish the enemy as much as possible?  Was it to take a little bit more territory?  Were most of the officers just following orders?  Were they worried that they might look timid and lose out on future promotions if they didn’t order their troops to continue the attack to the last minute?  Persico covers the motivations of the men giving the orders at all levels of command.  He also tells the story of many individual soldiers in the trenches.  And finally he interweaves the text with a general history of the war.

Though the book covers a lot of detail, it does not read like a standard WWI history.  There are no footnotes to slow the text down.  The chapters are usually broken up into short parts that make the book easy to pick up and put down.  And Persico knows the subject well and also knows how to tell a good story.  What results is a compelling look at one of the most baffling days in military history.

Check it out here!